Amazon FBA Fees Explained - 2026 India Seller Edition
Every Amazon FBA fee you will pay, broken down with real examples from a $32 bedsheet sale. Referral fee, pick & pack, monthly storage, inbound placement, low-inventory, removal, returns processing - none hidden, all real.
For a $32 standard-size product, expect to lose about $11-13 to Amazon (35-40% of revenue). The big three: 15% referral fee, $5.40 FBA pick & pack, $0.50/cu.ft. monthly storage. Surprise fees like inbound placement and low-inventory can add $1-2 more. Plan for 38-42% total Amazon take in your unit economics.
What's in this guide
Referral fee
The biggest fee. Amazon takes a percentage of every sale, varies by category. Most India-relevant categories:
| Category | Referral fee | Min fee |
|---|---|---|
| Apparel & Accessories | 17% | $0.30 |
| Home & Kitchen | 15% | $0.30 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 8% (under $10) / 15% | $0.30 |
| Health & Household | 8% (under $10) / 15% | $0.30 |
| Jewelry | 20% | $0.30 |
| Toys & Games | 15% | $0.30 |
| Office Products | 15% | $0.30 |
Charged on the total sale price including shipping the customer pays, not your net.
FBA Pick & Pack fee
Amazon's charge for storing, picking, packing, shipping, and customer service. Based on size tier (not weight alone):
| Size tier | Pick & pack 2026 | Typical product |
|---|---|---|
| Small standard (up to 1 lb) | $3.06 | Phone case, supplement bottle |
| Large standard (1-3 lb) | $4.16 | Coffee maker, small toy |
| Large standard (3-20 lb) | $5.40 | Bedsheet set, blanket |
| Small oversize | $8.60 | Large pillow, lamp |
| Medium oversize | $11.40 | Floor mat, large rug |
Use Amazon's FBA Calculator for your specific SKU or our FBA Fee Calculator.
Monthly storage fee
Charged per cubic foot occupied in Amazon's warehouse:
- Standard size: $0.78/cu.ft (Jan-Sep) → $2.40/cu.ft (Oct-Dec)
- Oversize: $0.56/cu.ft (Jan-Sep) → $1.40/cu.ft (Oct-Dec)
Q4 (Oct-Dec) storage triples. Plan for it - either ship just-in-time or store buffer with a 3PL like us at $0.50/cu.ft. flat year-round (33-79% cheaper than Amazon's Q4 rate).
Aged inventory surcharge: stored 271+ days adds $0.10-$6.90/cu.ft on top. Stored 365+ days = $6.90/cu.ft. Kills slow-moving SKUs.
Inbound Placement Service fee (NEW in 2024)
Amazon now charges to ship your inventory across its fulfillment network. You choose one of three options when creating an inbound shipment:
- Optimized split shipment: Free, but you ship to 4+ FCs (expensive freight)
- Partial split: $0.20-$0.60/unit, ship to 2 FCs
- Minimal split: $0.45-$1.50/unit, ship to 1 FC (cheapest freight, highest Amazon fee)
For most Indian sellers shipping container loads, the minimal split is worth it - saving freight outweighs the placement fee.
Low-Inventory-Level fee (LIL)
Introduced April 2024. Amazon charges extra ($0.89/unit) if your IPI (Inventory Performance Index) stays low - basically if you keep less than 28 days of inventory in stock.
How to avoid it: maintain at least 28-42 days of cover. We monitor this in our account management service and trigger restocks before the threshold hits.
Returns processing fee
For categories with high return rates (apparel, shoes, watches, jewelry), Amazon charges a returns processing fee on every unit returned. Currently $1.78 for small standard, scaling up with size.
Most home and kitchen categories are exempt. Apparel sellers should factor this into pricing.
Removal & disposal fees
If you want unsold inventory returned or disposed:
- Return to you: $0.97-$2.30/unit + freight
- Disposal: $0.97-$2.30/unit
- Liquidation: Amazon sells it cheap, you get pennies
Better path: ship FBA removals to our Austin TX warehouse ($1.25/unit incl. inspection), where we re-prep 60-70% for resale through FBM or other channels.
Full $32 bedsheet sale breakdown
Real example. Standard-size cotton bedsheet set, manufactured in Karur for ₹450 ($5.40), sold on Amazon for $34.99:
| Line item | Amount | % of price |
|---|---|---|
| Sale price | $34.99 | 100% |
| – Referral fee (15%) | -$5.25 | 15% |
| – FBA pick & pack (large std) | -$5.40 | 15.4% |
| – Monthly storage allocation | -$0.18 | 0.5% |
| – Inbound placement (minimal) | -$0.45 | 1.3% |
| – Returns allocation (3%) | -$0.55 | 1.6% |
| Amazon's total take | -$11.83 | 33.8% |
| – COGS ($5.40) | -$5.40 | 15.4% |
| – Freight allocation | -$2.50 | 7.1% |
| – Think14 prep ($0.70) | -$0.70 | 2.0% |
| – Ad spend (20% ACOS) | -$7.00 | 20.0% |
| Net per unit | $7.56 | 21.6% |
At 1,000 units/month: ~$7,560/month net profit on $34,990 GMV. Solid product.
The 35-40% Amazon take is normal. The mistake is pricing as if it weren't.
Want this calc for your real product? Use our Profit Margin Calculator - or send us your product details and we'll do it for you within 1 business day.
Why size tiers quietly decide your fulfillment fee
The single most controllable part of your FBA fee bill is the fulfillment fee, and it is controlled almost entirely by your product's size tier. Amazon sorts every product into a tier based on its packed dimensions and weight, and the fee jumps at each tier boundary. This creates a situation that catches many sellers off guard: a product sitting just a fraction of an inch or a few grams over a threshold pays the next tier's higher fee on every single unit, forever. Two products that look nearly identical can carry meaningfully different fulfillment fees purely because one crept into a larger tier.
For a seller importing from India, this is an opportunity hiding in plain sight. Shaving a product's packaging down, choosing a thinner box, a lighter filler, a more compact fold, can sometimes drop it into a cheaper tier and cut the per-unit fee permanently. Because that saving repeats on every unit you ever sell, the engineering effort to drop a tier often pays back many times over. It is worth checking, before you finalize packaging with your factory, exactly where your product sits relative to the nearest tier boundary.
The smaller fees that add up over a year
Beyond the two headline fees, the referral percentage and the fulfillment fee, sit a cluster of smaller charges that individually look trivial but collectively erode margin, especially for slow-moving inventory. Monthly storage fees climb steeply in the fourth quarter. Long-term storage surcharges hit inventory that lingers past Amazon's aging thresholds. Some categories carry returns-processing fees. Removal and disposal fees apply to unsellable stock. None of these is large on a single unit, but for a seller whose inventory turns slowly, or who over-ordered, they accumulate into a real drag on profit by year end.
The defence is mostly about inventory discipline: do not send more into Amazon than it will sell in a sensible window, and hold buffer stock in your own US warehouse rather than paying Amazon to store months of inventory. Feeding FBA in batches sized to your actual sales velocity keeps the storage meter low and avoids the aging surcharges entirely. Understanding the full fee picture, not just the obvious two charges, is what turns an optimistic profit projection into an accurate one, and what stops Amazon's smaller fees from quietly eating the margin you worked to build.
If you would rather not manage prep and inbound logistics yourself, our Amazon FBA prep service handles labeling, bagging, and inbound shipments from a US center, and you can hold buffer stock in our US warehouse instead of paying Amazon storage fees.